Ready, set, munch! Fort Worth Girl Scouts get cookies

Workers move pallets of Girl Scout cookies at the Fort Worth Zoo on Friday. More than a dozen tractor-trailers were to deliver some 45,600 cases of cookies. Max Faulknermfaulkner@star-telegram.com

Workers move pallets of Girl Scout cookies at the Fort Worth Zoo on Friday. More than a dozen tractor-trailers were to deliver some 45,600 cases of cookies. Max Faulknermfaulkner@star-telegram.com

FORT WORTH

Cookie season has begun.

Thousands of Girl Scouts and their parents waited in long lines Friday in the Fort Worth Zoo parking lot to pick up their initial stock of Girl Scout cookies. It was the 12th straight annual Cookies Now! event in Fort Worth,

Nearly 4,000 Girl Scouts were expected at the event, where they picked up more than half a million packages of cookies on the first day of the 2017 cookie season, which lasts through Feb. 26.

Each Girl Scout who picked up cookies Friday received a dolly of 12 cases containing 144 packages of cookies. Most of that will be sold this weekend, said Debbie Turner, senior director of the event.

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“That’s just the jump-start pack to hold them over until their orders come next week,” Turner said. “These girls are go-getters.”

Nearly 1 million Girl Scouts age 5-18 sell the iconic cookies nationwide at booths and door-to-door sales. For older Girl Scouts, cookie sales are more difficult.

“Some people say they only buy from little girls,” said Chloe Baars, a 15-year-old member of Troop 2711 from Fort Worth.

Brenna Kaplan, a 15-year-old member of Troop 2726 from Fort Worth, said it has gotten harder to sell as she’s gotten older, but she now has more opportunities.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the first known sale of cookies by Girl Scouts, and the organization is commemorating the anniversary with the special new S’mores cookie, a graham cookie double-dipped in creme icing and covered with a chocolatey coating.

Fort Worth and Dallas are under separate Girl Scouts councils and have different bakers, which is why some cookies have different names. For example, Caramel deLites in Fort Worth are known as Samoas in Dallas. ABC Bakers, which supplies the cookies on the Fort Worth side, makes Lemonades, which aren’t available from Little Brownie Bakers, the supplier on the Dallas side.

“My mom already has people from Dallas contacting her about the Lemonades,” Chloe said.

Cookie sales help Girl Scouts pay for camping trips, projects and donations, among other troop activities, and all the proceeds stay within the Texas Oklahoma Plains Council.

The cookies can only be bought from a Girl Scout. To find the nearest cookies, visit www.girlscoutcookies.org and enter your ZIP code.

Girl Scout cookies might not mesh with your New Years resolution, but the Girl Scouts have an answer to that: “You can donate to our Troop-to-Troop program,” Brenna said. The program sends cookies to U.S. soldiers overseas.